When it comes to athletics, people immediately turn to high school football or basketball. However, athletes in high school rarely compete in the collegiate level to begin with. So the real question is, why do people hold athletics to such a high standard? Athletics do not need to be held to such a high standard because they amount to nothing outside of high school.
According to NCAA research, only 6% of high school athletes go on to compete at the collegiate level. Essentially this means that out of the millions of high school athletes, around 486,000 of them continue their athletics careers in college. Further, fewer than 2% of NCAA student-athletes go on to be professional athletes.
Some athletes at the high school level take sports so seriously compared to their schooling that according to NMHSCA in their recent survey, 36% of averaged athletes are failing with one or more F’s. According to time.com, “Student-athletes tend to take easier classes and get lower grades than non-athletes.”
In high school, you always hear students buzzing about the latest in volleyball or what’s going on with basketball, but in the grand scheme of things, none of that matters after graduation. When you graduate, your brain switches into college mode, and tons of other great opportunities present themselves.
In the real, adult world, no body cares how much you can bench or how many miles you can run. You’re screaming into an empty room and expecting somebody to praise you or challenge you, but reality check, it doesn’t matter. If you’re never going to compete again after high school, what’s the point?
We have yet to even touch on the amount of career ending injuries sustained by high school athletes. It is estimated that 14-32% of athletes are inflicted with career ending injuries such as muscle and ligament tears, especially in the joints of the knee, hip, shoulder, elbow, spinal cord injuries, degenerative back, neck, thoracic, and cognitive injuries as the result of repetition and multiple impacts. There is no reason a child that age needs to have multiple lifelong injuries. It is entirely too much and yet it will amount to nothing outside of High School.
Now I know there’s someone out there asking ‘Well, what about the 2% that can make it in professional athletics?’ In professional athletics, you aren’t granted any longer than a ten-year career. According to a study done by RBC Sports Professionals group, the average playing careers ranges from the following: MLB, 5 years; NBA, 6 years; NHL, 7 years; and NFL, 7 years. 78% of professional athletes are likely to go broke after 3 years of retirement.
Ultimately, athletics mean nothing outside of high school because only a small percentage of athletes compete beyond high school, students are taking athletics so serious that they’re failing classes, it means little to nothing after graduation, nobody outside of high school cares, and a large percentage of high school athletes sustain career ending injuries which does nothing but further hurt the student. It may be fun entertainment at the time, but nothing is more important than getting a good education and taking academics seriously.
